From the opening blast of Everybody Loves A Happy Ending with its massive production and clarion call to “Wake Up”, listeners are in no doubt that Tears For Fears mean business. Despite Gary Jules’ amazing cover of ‘Mad World’, this is no half-baked eighties revival cash-in: this is a seriously ambitious album.
Whilst it would be easy for Tears For Tears to retread old glories, this album abandons the pop simplicity of their massive hits ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ and ‘Pale Shelter’, preferring a psychedelic rock sensibility.
The richly textured, irresistible dynamism of the opening title track reveals the album’s audacious scope: it is practically a concept album in a single track. It has the breeziness of the Boo Radleys coupled with Beatlesque lyricism but in a track that plays on the epic scale of ELO or even a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It hits like a truck without any breaks.
The first single, ‘Closest Thing To Heaven’ (released 21 February 2005) has an unselfconscious abandon which is quite remarkable given the caution that must have accompanied the reunion of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. If there were tensions, none are discernable in the Californian airiness of the harmonies in ‘Call Me Mellow’.
It is a sprawling and audacious album. The exquisite beauty of ballads such as ‘The Size of Sorrow’ sits alongside the dark undertones of the sixties-styled surrealism of ‘Who Killed Tangerine?’ ‘Quiet Ones’ demonstrates the shift from the immediacy of popiness to a guitar-driven complexity of song structure, fusing the diversity of Anthony Kiedis sound alike vocals with a Simon and Garfunkel sound arrangement.
‘Who You Are’ is a pleasingly direct ballad which does reveal this album’s single weakness. Such is their desire to experiment and prove their versatility, they cannot help trampling over the focus of a luscious dreamy ballad with another interruption of Sgt Pepper processed vocals.
In the way that many of Prince’s later albums are wrecked by the creative impulse to roam too far, too wide, occasionally Everybody Loves A Happy Ending takes us on one magical, mystery tour too many and leaves us floundering to find direction.
The UK version of this album features two bonus tracks of which the mellow sweetness of “Pullin’ A Cloud’ contrasts the Radiohead impenetrability of ‘Out of Control’. Lyrically, both Curt and Roland rework clichés in an ironic way.
However, the reigning in of personal emotion in favour of the universal, leaves Everybody Loves A Happy Ending a cerebral work, appealing to the head rather than the heart.
It is an album that evokes admiration rather than affection. That Tears For Fears have been able to set their differences aside to produce such a creatively unfettered album is worthy of huge praise. The artwork in the sleeve reveals two people still looking in opposite directions. Tears For Fears are still a creative force to be reckoned with but without that emotional synchronicity, we still wait for the happy ending.
Originally published 7th March 2005
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